NEALS President Matthew Treat Gives Opening Address

NEALS President Matthew Treat Gives Opening Address

Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts
As NEALS celebrates its 10th anniversary, we have witnessed significant changes in our association. We experienced a very humble beginning as a small group of learning specialist gathering at different schools in the fall and spring to share ideas and network. The concept was simple: to offer learning specialist the support, guidance, and confirmation of the programs that were being developed in independent school settings. Our association has been such a wonderful resource for so many educators over the years. Our numbers have grown and we now represent independent schools from all over the northeast.
When I took over as Board President last spring, I discovered that NEALS had just finished a significant chapter in its history. We had grown our members to record highs and accrued a reserve of monies to offset conference costs at host schools. We had achieved most of our short and long term goals. Now it is time to examine the next ten years and begin planning the next chapter in the history of NEALS.

Bullet We have new goals and objectives that need to be addressed
moving forward and they are to:
Bullet Restructure and rebuild the Board of Directors
Bullet Update/upgrade our NEALS website and other social media
outlets
Bullet Rethink how we run our yearly conferences to include a broader
range of participants
Bullet Outreach to new learning specialist members and potentially
broaden the base to educational consultants and therapists

Over the past six months, we’ve spent time updating the website and making it look more current. Our marketing and communications committee, chaired by Kim Ross, has put together a detailed plan for the next few years to transform the way we use our website to market and communicate with our constituents. The marketing committee has also begun to employ social networking tools. I would invite all of you to join our Facebook page. Our ability to use the NEALS social networking tools will allow us to grow as an organization through supporting one another in achieving out mission.

On another front, we are looking at ways of encouraging regular attendance to the NEALS conferences. The board will be examining conference locations, topics and compelling speakers so that members attend at least one of the two conferences each year and remain connected to NEALS. One challenge is that conferences have been held in southern New England making it difficult for northern schools to travel long distances. I would like to propose that we have a northern and a southern conference, with the hope that all of our members will connect with NEALS at least once a year. In addition we need to address topics for all of our members; including programs for independent day, boarding, and junior schools. The board is committed to creating accessible, interesting, and worthwhile conferences. I hope in the years to come, we can get all of our members to remain connected to NEALS.

My final objective for NEALS is to broaden our constituents. For ten years our association has served learning specialist from all over New England. During this time, we have all developed close relationships with other professionals outside of our schools. Educational consultants and therapists have developed close ties to the academic support programs in independent schools. It is the board’s feeling that we begin to cultivate these other professionals and encourage them to join our association to offer and share cutting edge knowledge in our wide fields of interest. In a direct effort to broaden our constituents, I attended the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) meeting in North Carolina. My trip to NC was very successful where I met and talked to many consultants who were very interested in joining NEALS and attending our yearly meetings. Please join me in welcoming our new consultants to the meeting today. We are all looking forward to the meaningful relationships in the future.

I feel our objectives are clear for the future and the time has arrived for all of us to plan for the next ten years and beyond. I hope all of you will give careful thought to the mission of NEALS and the objectives I have set forth for the next few years. We are armed with a wealth of knowledge and wisdom on our board. We have fresh new ideas with endless amount of energy. This will take time to implement, but I am confident that together, NEALS will be even stronger in the years to come.

Sincerely,

Matthew Treat
President of NEALS